Without any spoilers how you rate this book if you have read it. I am looking for a new series to read and my sister in-law's boyfriend mentioned it.

I'd give the book as a whole a 9.9/10

This series is really the kind of story that the first book can be independent, but if you read past the first book even a single chapter of the second book, you will need to finish the entire series to have complete context of any of it. Terry Goodkind has a knack of solidifying a story in the last few chapters. You'll be closing in to the end and feel like your going to run out of pages soon and the action and drama will just keep building and building?

The series overall is well designed and the characters are intelligent (usually) and even that badest of bads are relatable. on the whole i'd give the series a 8.5/10 Its one of my favs and the lead character Richard is someone personally if he was real, i'd want to meet him. There are times in every one of the books when characters play dumb and Terry Goodkind is very obviously just doing it to increase the number of pages in the book, but those are infrequent enough it doesn't distract from the overall story.

B. Communism is evil, capitalism is good. The entire book is devoted to hitting you over the head with this concept.

So my suggestion is to read the first book, and pretend the series ends there.

Sums up my feelings nicely. There are some really fun concepts going on, including later in the series, but for the last 4 or 5 books I couldn't help but feel like I was sitting in on a sermon - which is certainly not my taste.

I have read the entire series and have met Terry Goodkind in Las Vegas. He believes in heroes and believes that good should triumph over evil, both in his books and irl. Wizards First Rule was the book that got me back into reading, and I haven't stopped since. Read the book, get the next and decide for yourself. Don't listen to nay-sayers who try and tie fantasy worlds into RL politics. It's a fantasy book and as far as that goes, its one of the best.

You should see my signed limited edition print of "Faith of the Fallen" it's sweet!!

While I can't post pictures, I did take it out of the frame and took a picture for you. You can see it's numbered and unfortunatly Parkinson died not long before i purchased this print and I'm just happy the money went to his family!!

B. Communism is evil, capitalism is good. The entire book is devoted to hitting you over the head with this concept.

So my suggestion is to read the first book, and pretend the series ends there.

This is about the same thing I was going to post. I think the first book was a great start and I really enjoyed it. From there it was...well, a train wreck. How many times can Richard get mentally or physically tortured before it becomes boring? The first time it had meaning. Every time after made him out to be more and more of a little bitch. Which was funny I admit, but not enough humor to run an entire series.

Without any spoilers how you rate this book if you have read it. I am looking for a new series to read and my sister in-law's boyfriend mentioned it.

The first book is a pretty good book from a new author (at the time). After that the series devolves into a treatise on the views of the author (Ayn Rand is god) and you can tell how important a woman is to the main story based on how close she is to being raped at some point in the books.

The author never actually improves his writing, either, so the series as a whole just isn't good, despite the first book having some interesting ideas and characters. Those characters never progress. They never grow.

I would like to add in that I read all of the series that I could find. And yes looking back on the series I can see the preachyness and overall lame story lines, but in the moment you really get into the books. There is a few twists and turns that I couldn't see coming which maybe others did, but I really enjoyed the series as a whole. Of course there was a couple of times when you're reading the books and you were wishing people would do something different but the author did have a repetitive streak.

I really wanted to like this series, and I own something like the first 8, because I kept hoping it would turn back around. It starts strong, with a reasonable villain who has good reasons for being dastardly, but the recurring main villain a few books later is such a ridiculous caricature it's not even funny. "Might makes right" plus "Communism" and you have his entire character bio. After that it's all "bald but with a hairy chest and pretty pro-rape". There isn't even a good justification for any of it, because he's a "true believer" but there's not really any reason that holds up for him to do so, he's just rammed into that stance because the story needs a Big Bad.

And seriously, it's like 6 books where the moral is "freedom of choice GOOD, fascist communism BAD", except that the author's unable to really describe WHY communism is bad, so he made them raping warmongering atheist slavers. And they're all of those "because communism". None of which makes any sense at all. Not that I'm pro-communism, but if you can't even discuss it in fiction without implying that they're brainless rapey slavers, you're not making your case.

There's also a lot of "I'm a strong female! I'm all warrior-y and stuff! But now I'm going to sit down and have a good cry, or at least have an internal monologue about how much I want to cry, because the author thinks all women everywhere no matter what life they have led are emotion-bags on the edge of a breakdown at any given moment."

I just got frustrated with it, same as I had with the Wheel of Time series.

B. Communism is evil, capitalism is good. The entire book is devoted to hitting you over the head with this concept.

So my suggestion is to read the first book, and pretend the series ends there.

Agreed 100%. The first book is readable, things get progressively worse from there on. Goodkind is a big Ayn Rand fan and it shows.

Instead of reading the books, try the tv series (loosely, thankfully) based on them, Legend of the Seeker. It's harmless Sam Raimi fun.

Oh yeah, here's a priceless Goodkind quote, taken from the link posted above:

‘First of all, I don’t write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes. They have elements of romance, history, adventure, mystery and philosophy. Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It’s either about magic or a world-building. I don’t do either.’

and

Weymouth, MA: In your opinion who is the most must-read, cutting edge writer publishing today?

Terry Goodkind: Ayn Rand.

Last edited by Jon; 2012-10-09 at 04:45 AM.

I don't hate you. I'm just not necessarily excited about your existence.

I really wanted to like this series, and I own something like the first 8, because I kept hoping it would turn back around. It starts strong, with a reasonable villain who has good reasons for being dastardly, but the recurring main villain a few books later is such a ridiculous caricature it's not even funny. "Might makes right" plus "Communism" and you have his entire character bio. After that it's all "bald but with a hairy chest and pretty pro-rape". There isn't even a good justification for any of it, because he's a "true believer" but there's not really any reason that holds up for him to do so, he's just rammed into that stance because the story needs a Big Bad.

And seriously, it's like 6 books where the moral is "freedom of choice GOOD, fascist communism BAD", except that the author's unable to really describe WHY communism is bad, so he made them raping warmongering atheist slavers. And they're all of those "because communism". None of which makes any sense at all. Not that I'm pro-communism, but if you can't even discuss it in fiction without implying that they're brainless rapey slavers, you're not making your case.

There's also a lot of "I'm a strong female! I'm all warrior-y and stuff! But now I'm going to sit down and have a good cry, or at least have an internal monologue about how much I want to cry, because the author thinks all women everywhere no matter what life they have led are emotion-bags on the edge of a breakdown at any given moment."

I just got frustrated with it, same as I had with the Wheel of Time series.

Sword of Truth is ment as a light series, if you read too much into it you will not enjoy it.
However i did not feel like this about wheel of time at all but to be fair i have only read like 5 books from that series.

I accidentally started with the 4th book, soul of the fire, and i didn't know what the hell was going on, but i was so drawn into the story and into the characters i had to get the first book.

The sword of truth series, essentially got me into reading, that's how good these books are.

The characters are well detailed, the plot amazing, you will love Wizard's first rule and the following books that come after....my personal favorite was the ending of Phantom and the start of Confessor. Awesome series

IMO, it was decent. If you do plenty of reading and 11 books isn't going to take you too long I would say it's worth it. It does get preachy at times, and usually you can just skim the long monologues. I would say it's an action movie compared to the long epics of ASoIaF or WoT.

Originally Posted by Wells

Lets say you have a two 3 inch lines. One is all red and the other is 48% red and 52% blue. Does that mean there's a 50-50 chance they're both red or is the second line matching the all red line by 48%?